RECONSTRUCTING FREUD'S PROTOTYPE RECONSTRUCTIONS

by Harold P. Blum, M.D.

In October, 1931 Freud wrote to the Mayor of Pribor "Deep within me,
although overlaid, there continues to live the happy child of Pribor....who received
from this air, from the soil, the first indelible impressions."(Gay, 1988, p.575).
Freuds childhood, however, was more complicated and conflicted than his
statement suggests. His infancy was also characterized by trauma, stress,
interpersonal conflict, and burgeoning intra-psychic conflict. The happy child he
described in 1931 may be compared to an idealized screen memory. Freud actually
wrote in somber terms about his childhood in Pribor in his initially anonymous
paper "Screen Memories (1899). Little Sigmund's early childhood involved a series
of losses, a familial upheaval and a socio-economic crisis. Freud later indicated his
life in Pribor had a catastrophic end.
Much of Freud's initial reconstructions, the main focus of this paper,
concerned his first three years of life in Pribor, in the Czech Republic, then within
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Astounding for their brilliance, complexity and
depth, they were related to Fliess (1985) in a series of letters during the very brief
period of the month of October, 1897. These reconstructions pertained to his infant
brother, Julius; his mother; his nursemaid(s); his relationship with his nephew,
John. The Oedipus complex was first formulated and simultaneously antecedents of
the Oedipus complex were reconstructed and given importance in their own right.
The social, cultural context of life in Pribor will be considered (Burianek, 2013;

Mahler & Papiasvili, 2013). The intersection of Freuds internal and external
worlds, historical facts, our imagination, as well as our transference and
countertransference to Freud will all influence the process of reconstruction and
reinterpretation.
Reconstructions of early childhood had never before been systematically
attempted, nor had early object relationships been considered as forerunners of
adult object relations and adult personality. Freud glimpsed his own infantile life
and fantasy life largely from dreams, as well as memory fragments and screen
memories. Without a well-defined methodology, skeptical of his own findings, he
checked his reconstructions and distorted memory fragments with his mother.
Asking her for factual correction and validation, he struggled to differentiate fact
from fantasy, historical reality from psychic reality, the interpersonal and the intrapsychic. These issues which concerned Freud for a lifetime have recurred as
controversial subjects up to the present. Reconstruction was an entirely new
approach to the understanding of infancy and early child development beyond the
reach of conscious adult memory. These initial reconstructions, dazzling in their
day, require modification and updating in the light of contemporary theory and new
knowledge. They are nevertheless landmarks in the evolution of psychoanalysis; the
process of reconstruction transcends the content.
Freud appeared unaware of his own motivations for these reconstructions
nor did he comment on his own vacillation at that time regarding seduction trauma
a misleading term for child abuse. He did not link his pioneer reconstructions in the
very brief period of October, 1897, which reinstated the seduction trauma (child

abuse) of pathogenesis, after his just having repudiated it (September, 1897). This
repudiation had exonerated his father, whom he had previously accused of abusing
his siblings. He did not refer to the first anniversary of his father's death in
October, 1896 and was not then aware of the significance of his own fatherhood. He
was apparently not cognizant at this time of his ambivalent transference
relationship to Fliess, nor the possibility that at forty-one years of age he may have
been experiencing a mid-life crisis (Anzieu, 1986). Freud was motivated toward his
work on dreams from an early age, but the first anniversary of the death of his
father, the replacement of Breuer by Fliess, and his burgeoning inner struggle to
emancipate himself from dependency on Fliess were all determinants of his October,
1897 seemingly sudden burst of insight.
LIFE IN ONE ROOM IN PRIBOR
Little Sigmund was domiciled for his first three years and five months in one
small room in which he lived with his parents. This was on the second floor of a
building in which the landlord locksmith lived in the other second floor room, above
his shop. It is virtually impossible to fully grasp the meanings of the Freud room
without having personally been in it. being in it. In the framework of the one room,
little Sigmund would have been exposed to the sights, sounds, smells, movements,
vibrations and emotional resonances of that confined space. There was no running
water, plumbing, heating, lighting, toilet or kitchen. There were temperature
extremes of freezing winters and sweltering summers. Freud's very likely exposure
to the primal scene in the one room with his parents in Pribor has been frequently
emphasized in psycho-biographical discourse. Freud's later reconstructions of the

primal scene, e.g. in the case of the Wolfman (1918) , may be understood as having
a parallel in Freud's own primal scene experience and fantasy. However, a singular
focus on the primal scene will be blind to the complexity of family life in the
framework of the one small room. Evolving intra-psychic boundaries were
burdened by such close psychological and physical contact, with the potential for
problems in attachment and separation-individuation. Social boundaries were
significant, notably in the cultural, historical context of the Freuds insecure status
in Pribor , and a background of widespread European anti-semitism.
Freuds first exposure to language in the Freud room would have been
Yiddish, spoken between the parents and to him. German and Czech and other
dialects would have been first encountered in the world external to his room.
Freuds interpretation and reconstruction of the famed smile of the Mona Lisa
could be applied to Amalies smile, mirroring the social smile of baby Sigmund. The
Fort-Da game of Freuds grandson might have replicated the Fort-Da game played
in the locksmith shop when Amelie was transiently away. Communication within
the room, the facial expressions, posture, and gestures of his parents, the private
conversation and the secrets of the parental couple, would have been very different
from their public persona, language, and behavior. The interior life in the one room
was doubtless different from the exterior socio-cultural, linguistic, and religious
milieu. Parental harmony or discord, agreement or argument,the obvious as well as
the more subtle attitudes and reactions of the parental couple would have been
conveyed to little Sigmund. In turn, Sigmunds every cry, laugh, babble etc. would
be heard by Amalia. The intimate scenes may have greatly stimulated rather than

inhibited the curiosity of an infant with Freuds endowment. It should be noted that
numerous persons in a crowded room was a common way of life which currently
persists in many parts of the world.
In the one small room Freud also would have been exposed to his mothers
pregnancy with Julius and accompanying bodily changes, her nursing of Julius,
and the fatal gastro-intestinal illness of Julius. Probably born in October, 1857,
Julius would have been conceived when Freud was about nine months of age. Freud
may have been exposed to the home birth of Julius when Freud was eighteen
months of age. Considering the amenorrhea of lactation, a natural form of
contraception, Freud was likely to have been nursed for no more than seven months.
The oral-maternal deprivation coincident with the life and death of Julius may have
been an important determinant of Freuds addiction to cigars, and his oral cancer.
Play within the room would have been limited and under the dominion of
Amalia. Play with his nephew John in the nearby fields would have been an
important developmental experience for little Sigmund, with space for experiment
and exploration of reality (Winnicott, 1971). However, a crowded room was then
the way of life of most people in little towns like Pribor and indeed currently in
many areas of the world. Issues of space, suffocation, and separation abound.
Before her marriage, Freud's mother, Amalia, had been living in
Vienna with her parents, Jacob and Sara Nathansohn (Amalia is derived from her
Hebrew name, Malka, meaning queen). She was born in Brody, Galicia, a frontier
town with an 88% Jewish population. Married at twenty years of age, she moved to
Pribor with her new husband, like her father, named Jacob, and twice her age.

Jacob Freud had two grown sons living in Pribor from his first marriage in
Tysmenitz, Galicia, Emanuel, age 24, and Philip, age 20. How did Amalia
psychologically adapt, so far removed from her family and friends, with no relatives
in Pribor, except for her husband, his sons, and Emanuel's wife. Her experience
would have been similar to that of a recent immigrant. Relocated in a remote
village, in a strange socio-cultural and linguistic surround, she quickly became
pregnant with Sigmund, born nine months after her marriage. Seven siblings
appeared in rapid succession. Julius, his birth and death, were to be followed by
Freud's five sisters and his brother, Alexander. Jacob Freud had lost his father,
Shlomo, for whom Freud was named, six months before Freud's birth. Although
named Shlomo Sigismund Freud, neither Shlomo nor Solomon was used as his first
name. Freud changed his first name from Sigismund to Sigmund in connection with
his shifting adolescent identity. Amalia lost her brother Julius one month before the
birth of her son Julius, probably named for his deceased uncle. While Amalia's
health and state of mind during her pregnancy with Sigmund and then with Julius
are not recorded, object loss, mourning, possible pulmonary illness and depression,
would all have influenced her relationship with infant Sigmund. Freud's mother,
conspicuous by her absence, is hidden behind a defensive barricade; there are many
more references to his father in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900), and in
his case histories. Off limits for published discussion, Amalia, was alive until 1930,
age 95. Amalia was supposedly the only woman Freud kissed in public.
THE FREUD FAMILY IN THE PRIBOR AREA

Born in Brody, Galicia, a town with an 88% Jewish population, Freud's

mothe initially spoke Yiddish. Having moved with her parents to Vienna, she
acquired some degree of fluency in colloquial German. Upon arrival in Pribor she
presumably had to learn a rudimentary Czech language. Freud's father conducted
his business in Czech and in German, could read and write Hebrew, and would have
known Polish from being reared in Tysmenitz. Brody and Tysmenitz, 50% Jewish,
were centers of Jewish religious and cultural life in Galicia, Poland, now part of the
Ukraine. Both orthodox and more assimilated Jews were to be found in Tysmenitz,
adjacent and ambivalent to each other ((Krull, 1986). Though in business with his
orthodox Jewish grandfather, Jacob Freud was exposed to the wider world as a
traveling merchant, before settling in Pribor in 1855. Freuds parents were married
by a non-orthodox Rabbi, indicating that they were already assimilated.
There are no Jews left in Tysmenitz or Brody; virtually all the resident Jews
were murdered in the holocaust. Preferring travel to cities of classical antiquity,
Sigmund Freud never visited parental Tysmenitz or Brody. In Pribor Jacob Freud
was a "tolerated Jew", requiring that his business permit be renewed about every
six months. Jacob also told Sigmund at about age ten the humiliating tale of his
having had his hat knocked off and being forced into the gutter in Pribor by an antiSemite who hurled the insult "Jew, get off the pavement" (Freud, 1900, p.197). To
add insult to injury, Jacob had previously donated funds beyond the extra tax on
Jews for paving the walk. (Burianeck, 2013). The gutter was littered with animal
droppings and sewage, so Jacob's humiliation was severe and public. Jacob would
have to watch his step; Jews would have to keep a low profile. Why did Freuds

father decide to tell Sigmund of this hurtful incident at that time in Vienna? Jacob
may have unconsciously conveyed his fantasy of his son avenging his humiliation or
compensating for his humiliation through high achievement. Jacob may have
indicated that Jewish life in Vienna was superior to that of earlier times and places.
Opportunities and pathways were open to capable, enterprising Jews. At the same
time Jacob devalued himself and diminished Sigmunds respect in his depiction of
abject submission to bigotry. The incident may have been representative of a more
generalized diminished self-respect and family respect. Jacob had failed in business
and could not support his family. He may have symbolically and ambivalently
ceded paternal authority to Sigmund who would then have to resolve his guilt over
his oedipal victory in developing psychoanalysis. Sigmund then identified with
Hannibal and other military heroes who would be victors rather than victims, and
who could reverse defeat and masochistic submission. A three per cent minority in
Catholic Pribor, with a population of 4,500, Jewish families were insecure, aware
of anti-Semitic diatribes, discrimination, and a history of violent persecution. Jews
in Pribor were tolerated, yet foreign, outside and inside without being legal citizens
of a xenophobic land (Robert, 1975; Mahler and Papiasvili, 2013).
Pregnant with Julius, Amalia stayed at the Spa at Roznau, ten miles south of
Pribor, with Sigmund and one of his nursemaids, Resi Wittek, for several months.
She was separated from her husband, his relatives, and friends such as the Fluss
family. According to their records, babies were born at the Spa, possibly including
Julius Freud. The Spa "cure" was primarily mineral baths, rich in sulfur, with rest
in the sun for the treatment of pulmonary disorders. Since the Freud family lived a

poor, Spartan life in one room in Pribor, how could Amalia afford the prolonged
stay at the Spa? If Amalia had tuberculosis like her deceased brother Julius, her
delicate physical and or psychological condition could have justified the stay. Jacob
and his sons or Amalia's family of origin would have somehow defrayed the cost.
Amalia appears to have been indulged in frequent visits to the Roznau Spa even
after she had moved to Vienna. She inexplicably visited Roznau twenty-four times
for stays of variable length while living in poor circumstances in Vienna. It does not
appear that she ever visited Pribor again, even though it was very close to the spa.
Twice she was accompanied to Roznau by Sigmund and a sibling. Were the stresses
of closely repeated pregnancies, nursing, and nurturing relevant to her spa retreats?
Had she been worried about her own health? Was she concerned about the
transmission of disease to her children, especially after the illness and death of her
infant, Julius.

Mourning and depressed after his loss, the spa might also have been

viewed as a physical and psychological place for her to recover. If she had been
ailing, the availability of the nursemaid (Resi) at the Spa takes on greater meaning
(Guntrip, 1975; Kardiner, 1977; Green, 1986).

THE NURSEMAIDS
Freud's references to his nursemaid in his early reconstructions are
fascinating, contradictory and enigmatic, both revealing and concealing. Many
prior analytic contributions have elaborated the significance of Freud's
nursemaid(s) and issues of multiple caregivers (Grigg, 1973; Swan, 1974; Hardin,
1987, 1988). Condensed into one figure in Freud's letters, three nursemaids have

now been documented. Two of the three nursemaids, Monica Zajic and Magadelena
Kabatova were in their twenties, similar in age to Amalia and Maria, Emanuel's
wife. Monica was the daughter of the locksmith, and landlord, though both she and
Magdelena were listed as residing in Emanuel's home. They may have shared
functions as housemaid and nanny for the children of Amalia and Marie.
Magdelena is the only one referred to in the historical records as a nanny, and, of
interest, also as a wet nurse. Did she function as a wet nurse for any of the Freud
family's children? Was there a brief period of Sigmund having had a wet nurse
when Amalia was pregnant with Julius? While there are as retrieved records of two
nursemaids having resided in Pribor, the third, Resi Wittek is only mentioned as
having accompanied Amalia to the spa. Her name appears on the guest list of the
Roznau Spa as a servant of Amalia Freud in June, 1857. That there were three
nursemaids might have added to little Sigmund's bewilderment about their
relationship to him. Three nursemaids with different temperaments and attitudes
might also have been a spur to Sigmund's adapting and attuning to a world of
different languages, cultures, and religions.
Freud alleged that the nursemaid had been his teacher in sexual matters,
implying sexual abuse (letter to Fliess, October 4, 1897). Freud stated, "She washed
me in reddish water in which she had previously washed herself [The interpretation
is not difficult...]"(i.e., he had been washed in her menstrual blood. I find nothing
like this in the chain of my memories so I regard it as a genuine ancient discovery".
Freud thought the nurse had induced him to steal coins for her, corrected in
the next letter to Fliess, October 15, 1897. His nurse was the direct thief, discovered

10

by his half brother Philip, and arrested by the police during Amalia's confinement
with Freud's first sister, Anna, born December 31, 1858. Freud's mother validated
the reality of his reconstruction, adding that the nurse was imprisoned for ten
months. No record of her arrest or imprisonment has yet been found, but she could
have been immediately dismissed and disappeared or prison records lost. Three
nursemaids with different attitudes and temperaments could have contributed to
little Sigmunds confusion , but could also have been a spur to his curiosity and
comprehension.
Freuds ambivalence to his nursemaid(s) is marked in the letters of October 3
and 4, 1897. He briefly referred to the "prime originator" (the nursemaid) as the
source of his neurotic conflicts. The nursemaid was seen as the perpetrator of
seduction trauma, which was then reinstated as a source of psycho-pathology.
However, seduction trauma was no longer the virtually exclusive etiology. In the
October 3, 1897 reconstruction the "prime originator" was "an ugly, elderly, but
clever woman who told me a great deal about God almighty and Hell, and who
instilled in me a high opinion of my own capacities". ...If I am successful in resolving
my own hysteria, then I shall be grateful to the memory of the old woman who
provided me at such an early age with the means for living and going on living".
Freud's ambivalently loved nursemaid was both depicted as a protective, supportive
mother surrogate, but in contradiction, also as a corrupt perpetrator of seduction,
abuse and delinquency. Was this ambivalence to a nursemaid an example of
splitting or a reaction to different nursemaids? Did any of the nursemaids have a
living child of her own? Had any of the nursemaids had a recent miscarriage or a

11

deceased infant? A nursemaid who did not produce sibling rivals could have been
safe haven, dissociated from an unavailable mother. The nanny could have been a
displacement for mother and the mother a displacement for the nanny. (Colombo,
2010).
Why did Freud consider his nursemaid rather than his mother as bolstering
his self esteem and providing "the means for living"? I believe his mother was
always more important, more influential in his life than any one nanny. The
relationships of the nursemaids to Freud's mother, to each other, and to their
shared part time care of little Sigmund are obscure. The nursemaids were
Christian; as paid servants they could be dismissed at any time. Moreover, existence
of three nursemaids suggests that attachment to any one of them would have been
limited. Freuds mothers initial reference to the nursemaid as ugly and old suggests
an emotional dislike, rather than merely a comment about her physical appearance.
This shifting displacement among the main women in Freud's life would not have
been unique at that time. In his letter to Fliess, February 9, 1898, Freud mentioned,
"Had a delightful dream...which unfortunately cannot be published...its second
meaning shifts back and forth between my nurse, my mother!, and my wife and one
cannot really publicly subject one's wife to reproaches of this sort." The figure of
the nursemaid was recurrent in Freud's dreams, and thought, evident in the Fliess
letters and in The Interpretation of Dreams. A Christian nanny appears as a nun
in his dream of my son the myops (Freud, 1900).
During the time of the Freuds living in Pribor, there was a famous
case in which a Jewish child's nanny claimed she had secretly baptized him in

12

church. The Catholic Church proclaimed that no Christian child could be raised in
a Jewish family. Forcibly removed from his distraught parents in June, 1858, he
became a ward of the Pope (Kertzer, 1997). International protests against the
child's kidnapping may well have reached Pribor when Freud was two years old.
Yet, Freud's parents were not alarmed by the nanny taking their toddler to church
or afterwards by Freud's preaching like a priest. Did his parents want privacy and
time without their child? Amalia may have been more relieved than alarmed about
Sigmund being taken to church, and to an excursion in the village square.
The "reddish water" reconstruction may have been further over-determined,
by remote links to reddish water Possibly Freud confused a reference in church to
being "washed in the blood of the lamb" with the nursemaid's washing him (Vitz,
1993). Moore to the point, as an observant toddler Freud could likely have noticed
menstrual blood stained garments of mother or nursemaid being washed, conflated
with his own bath. (Sanitary napkins and tampons were not available until 1890).
The observations of a toddler might have been dismissed by the adults as of no
consequence. If, as Freud was convinced, he had really been bathed in bloody
water, might he also have been abused in other ways? Was he subjected to harsh
discipline for example, in bathing, dressing, eating or toilet training? Washing
Freud in the nursemaid's menstrual blood could have been the enactment of her
fantasy that he was born from her womb, her biological child.
JULIUS
Freud (Fliess letter, October 3, 1897), reconstructing his reactions to
the birth of brother Julius, Freud stated, "I greeted my one year younger brother

13

(who died after a few months) with adverse wishes and genuine childhood jealousy;
and that his death left a germ of self reproaches in me". (While Julius's death
certificate exists, no documentation of the date and location of Julius's birth has as
yet surfaced). Infant mortality, then about 33%, deeply influenced parent-child
relationships and social attitudes towards children. Freuds reconstruction of his
reaction to the birth of Julius and to the death of Julius at six months of age when
Freud was just 23 - 24 months of age, was remarkable (Blum, 1977). Without overt
acknowledgement of his prior (1897) Julius reconstruction, Freud (1931, p132-133)
described infantile reactions to new siblings "This jealousy is constantly receiving
fresh nourishment in the later years of childhood and the whole shock is repeated
with the birth of each new brother or sister. Nor does it make a difference if the
older child remains the mother's preferred favorite. A child's demands for love are
immoderate. They make exclusive claims and tolerate no sharing of their mother".
Note that this essay, written soon after his mother's death (1930), still avoids
the mother's reactions to her pregnancies, the death of Julius, and to having
additional children. Did Freud unconsciously blame his mother as well as himself
for the loss of Julius and the concurrent disappearance of a nursemaid? He also lost
his mothers exclusive attention and affection to his sister Anna. There is an
implication that he unconsciously fantasied that his mother had been impregnated
by his half -brother Philip than his own father. The increase in the size of the family
alters the relationship of the parents to their first child, the parents to each other,
and each sibling's relation to each parent and to each other. In this connection
Freud (1914) once designated the Oedipus complex as a family complex without

14

further explanation. The term "Oedipus complex" in its schematic form, however,
did not at first address the negative Oedipus complex, or the "family complex" in
which there is more than one child, and/or more than two generations (Blum, 2011).
Overlooked in the formulation of the Oedipus complex, Freuds father and his halfbrother Emanuel were concurrently building their families in Pribor with inevitable
Oedipal conflict.
Freud's infantile jealously of his first sibling, his brother Julius, can also be
reconstructed as reactivated by his unconscious infantile rivalry and envy of Fliess.
Fliess was two years younger than Freud and could represent Julius as swell as
Freud's parents. His rivalry with Fliess for scientific discovery, underneath their
friendly collaboration, was another powerful incentive for Freud's own discoveries.
Freuds and Fliesss wives had overlapping pregnancies, and Freud was pregnant
in conscious fantasy, gestating psychoanalysis. "After the frightful labor pains of
the last few weeks, I gave birth to a new form of knowledge...". His allusions to
being pregnant disappear after the Fliess relationship terminated and Freud had
analyzed his feminine fantasies, and bisexual identification in the primal scene
(Blum, 1990; Newton, 1995)
TRAVEL PHOBIA In his October 3, 1897 letter to Fliess, Freud noted that
his travel phobia was at its height. Related to his travel phobia and his father
stopped and forced off the pavement, Sigmund Freud analyzed the myth of
Oedipus. An adopted child, Oedipus did not permit his unknown biological father to
travel beyond where three roads met, engaging in parricidal combat. Freud could
not enter Rome until sufficient progress had been made in his self-analysis in 1901.

15

Similar unconscious conflicts were reactivated in his 1904 travel when Freud
experienced de-realization on the Acropolis (Robert, 1976).
Freud had observed that two great universal questions of children are
"where do babies come from?" and "what are the anatomical differences between
the sexes?" In this same letter as the reconstruction of his reactions to Julius
(October 3, 1897), Freud recounts an experience of seeing his mother nudam" on
the train journey from Leipzig to Vienna between two and two and a half years of
age. Freud was actually closer to 3 1/2 or four years of age at the time of that train
trip. By using Latin and dating the exposure to his nude mother at an earlier age,
Freud may have been defending against his dawning awareness of incestuous overstimulation and Oedipal guilt. Latin both concealed and revealed forbidden
excitement The letter gives the impression of a first and single exposure to his nude
mother rather than repeated exposure to her body and the primal scene in their
Pribor room. Freud likely had seen his mother dress and undress, and he had to
have observed changes in her body during and after her pregnancy with Julius
(Balsam, 2012). Amalia was probably pregnant again during the train ride to
Leipzig, since Freud's second sister, Rosa, was born March 22, 1860 in Vienna. The
train ride with his mother without the presence of his father, might have activated
his travel phobia. He was phobic regarding both seeing his mother nude as well as
not seeing her and experiencing separation anxiety.

RECONSTRUCTION AND SCREEN MEMORY

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In a letter to Fliess, October 15, 1897, p. 271 Freud wrote "...a scene
occurred to me which in the course of 25 years has occasionally emerged in my
conscious memory without my understanding it". Screen memories are enduring,
vivid, visual, and usually isolated or encapsulated. Bernfeld (1947) realized that
Freud's early years in Pribor were referred to in this letter, Freud's paper "Screen
Memories" (1899) was disguised analytic autobiography
A compromise formation, Freuds screen memory has been described as
unusual, an adolescent memory projected backward in time to early childhood.
Freud's screen memory, however, concerns both his adolescence and his early
childhood in Pribor, a constellation of memories and fantasies (La Farge, 2012).
Freud did not connect his adolescent fantasy to his father having fathered his halfbrothers when his father was an adolescent. Nor did he overtly associate to his
father and his half-brother Emanuel both fathering children in Pribor.

In the

"Screen Memories" paper the disguised subject (Freud) and his nephew (John)
snatched a bouquet of yellow flowers (dandelions) from his niece, Pauline. Without
identifying the Pribor setting, Freud (1899) stated: "At the top end of the meadow
there is a cottage...in front of the cottage door two women are standing, a peasant
woman with a handkerchief on her head and a children's nurse. Three children are
playing...one of them is myself (between the ages of two and three)...the two others
are my boy cousin who is a year older than me, and his sister who is almost the exact
age as I am. We are picking the yellow flowers (dandelions)...The little girl has the
best bunch...we the two boys - fall on her and snatch away her flowers. She runs up
the meadow in tears and as a consolation the peasant woman gives her a big piece of

17

black bread...we throw the flowers away...ask to be given some bread too. And we
are...given some" The scene would have taken place in 1859 when Sigmund was
about three years old, John three and three quarters, and Pauline, age two and a
half. The peasant woman might have represented Emanuel's wife or Amalia
(Krull, 1986). The nurse could have represented any or all of Freuds nursemaids
In the same screen memory paper an adolescent girl wore a yellow dress as
had Gisela Fluss, the object of Freuds adolescent crush when he visited Pribor.
This dress appears to be linked to the yellow flowers stolen from Pauline. In the
screen memory paper (1899) Freud related an adolescent masturbation fantasy of
deflowering a bride, The flowers are significant in Freuds 1898 dream of the
botanical monograph with associations referring to screen memories (Anzieu, 1986).
Freud was passionately admiring not only of Gisela, but also of her mother (Clark,
1980). His screen memory overlay his unconscious incestuous fantasies concerning
Gisela's mother and ultimately his own mother. His adolescent fantasy concerning
Gisela may be regarded as a revision of the childhood scenes with his playmates.
Freud reconstructed his relationship with John as a prototype of his later
object relations. Following his reconstruction of his affective response to the birth
and death of Julius, Freud (letter to Fliess, October 3, 1897) stated, "I have also long
known the companion of my misdeeds between the age of one and two years is my
nephew, a year older than myself, ... who visited us in Vienna when I was fourteen
years old. The two of us seem occasionally to have behaved cruelly to my niece, who
was a year younger. This nephew and this younger brother have determined, then,
what is neurotic, but also what is intense in all my relationships...." The nature of

18

their collusion in crime against Pauline is obscure. Did they play sexual games or
rudely undress Pauline? Were they cruel to Pauline in play as well as filching her
bunch of flowers? Freud may have been struggling with guilt over having
recommended the nearly lethal botched surgery Fliess performed on Emma
Eckstein. Fliess was the adult companion of his misdeeds.
JOHN
Freud (1900) elaborated his reconstruction of his ambivalent relationships in
The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud stated (1900, p.483), "...my warm friendships
as well as my enmities with contemporaries went back to my relations in childhood
with a nephew...all my friends have in a certain sense been reincarnations of this
figure...my emotional life has always insisted that I should have an intimate friend
and a hated enemy. I have always been able to provide myself afresh with both, and
it has not infrequently happened that the ideal situation of childhood has been so
completely reproduced that friend and enemy have come together in a single
individual - though not of course, both at once or with constant oscillations, as may
have been the case in my early childhood." Friendships followed by animosity would
characterize Freud's relationships with Breuer, Fliess, and Jung. Dazzling in their
day, reconstructions of his relationship with John should no longer be accepted
without modification. Are these ambivalent relationships with John stereotypes for
all of Freud's subsequent object relations? The splitting of the figure of John into
friend and enemy, and the following integration into one person strikingly
foreshadows the developmental concepts of Klein (1950) and Mahler (Mahler, Pine,
and Bergman (1975). Freud's remarks also anticipate failure to unify split loved and

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hated self and object representations in severe personality disorders (Kernberg,

1984). In his initial reconstruction, Freud proposed a theory of object relations and
implied object representations before introducing drive theory. Aggression and
hostility were noted before formulating a separate aggressive drive. Freud's nephew
could hardly have had the vital influence on his object relations of Freud's mother
or father. Nor does it now seem possible for John to have been an exclusive
prototype for Freud's later object relationships. However, John could have been a
significant determinant of Freud's ambivalent relationships, especially with males.
Dear friend and hated enemy, John prefigures Freud's Oedipal relationship to
his own father (John's grandfather) and on a deeper level his mother. Fighting with
John for possession of the field or toy avoids the trenchant issue of exclusive
possession of the mother. John Freud may well have been a safe displacemnet for
Freud's hostility toward his parents.
Considering the mother-son relationship, Freud mainly interpreted erotic
rather than both erotic and hostile fantasy. Even in his later years Freud (1933)
regarded the mother-son relationship as the most perfect of human relationships
free from ambivalence. But in the one dream Freud (1900) recalled from his
childhood at about age nine, his mother was carried by bird-beaked figures as
though dead. Matricidal fantasy was not interpreted. Similarly, Freud did not
comment on the mother's possible ambivalence toward her baby.
Freud, stated in his final outline (1939, p. 188), "A child's first erotic object is
the mother's breast, that nourishes it ..This first object is later completed into the
person of the child's mother...the root of a mother's importance, unique, without

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parallel, established unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest loveobject, and as the prototype of all later love relations - for both sexes."
DISCUSSION
Freud s initial reconstruction of his infancy was amazing and still
mysterious. Was repudiating seduction trauma as crucial to pathogenesis the key to
his immediate theoretical advance? Or had the first reconstructions been
percolating in his unconscious?" Distinguishing between hypothesis and validation
of his reconstructions, Freud (letter to Fliess, October3, 1897, p.268) wrote "My selfanalysis which I consider indispensable for the clarification of the whole problem
has continued in dreams and has presented me with the most valuable elucidations
and clues. In the throes of resistance to insight and growing insight into resistance
Freud continued (letter October 27, 1897, p.274) I am gripped and pulled through
ancient times...my moods change like a traveler from a train...Many a sad secret of
life is here followed back to its first roots...." Shortly afterward (letter to Fliess,
November 14, 1897, p. 281) Freud incisively asserted "True self analysis is
impossible...."
In the same burst of creativity, Oedipal conflict and sibling conflict virtually
coalesce in Freud's monumental initial reconstructions which also encompassed
interpretation of Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. The germ of guilt Freud mentioned in
connection with the death of Julius foreshadows the later significance of oedipal
guilt, and the guilt of the survivor. The formulation that early object relations are
forerunners of the adult personality however, was novel and fundamental.
Reconstruction may have diminished resistance to insight and affectively

21

appropriate insight reciprocally fostered reconstruction. Freud's (1900)

interpretation of his dreams led to reconstruction of his fratricidal and parricidal
conflicts, evident in his 1898 "non-vixit" dream. In that dream, the ghosts of past
persons can magically be made to reappear and disappear. Fliess could be
annihilated in the present transference, as in the buried past Julius and John had
disappeared. Freud interpreted fainting in Munich, 1912 in Jung's presence to
unconscious conflict regarding the death of Julius. Freud then said how sweet it is
to die (Schur, 1972). Reconstruction of object loss may have served undoing,
reparation, and atonement .
Freud in his reconstructions, searched from the start for correspondence to
historical facts, to reality, rather than only to fantasy or what was merely a coherent
or plausible narrative. There is no definite boundary between clarification,
interpretation and reconstruction. Analysts and patients regularly engage in
reconstruction even when this dimension of analytic work is not formally identified.
Despite rigid injunctions by some analysts to rely only on analytic data, I believe it is
valuable for rational conviction and analytic research to have reconstruction
validated in external reality.
An integration of various strands of analytic work, reconstruction is today
understood in a wider context than filling in a missing gap in memory (Blum, 2005;
Green, 2012). Reconstruction complements and often supplants memory retrieval,
restoring the history and continuity of the self (Hinz, 2012). Pointing from the past
to the future, with increasing self-knowledge, reconstruction fosters intra--psychic
interpersonal and intergenerational integration on higher levels and greater

22

complexity than was possible in childhood (Faimberg, 2006). Freud's pioneer

reconstructions are the foundation for current propositions regarding ego deficits,
procedural memory, pre-symbolic thought and somatic imprints. Freud (1937,
p.265) soberly cautioned "We do not pretend that an individual construction is
anything more than a conjecture which awaits examination, confirmation, or
rejection". In the evolving process of interpretation and reconstruction, Freud
wrote to an uncomprehending Fliess, October 3, 1897, "I cannot convey to you any
idea of the intellectual beauty of the work".

23

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